LA Trying to Lure NFL Team

By AP&nbsp|&nbsp

Posted: Fri 2:47 PM, Jan 16, 2009

The annals of pro football are filled with incredible comebacks, which might be why billionaire Ed Roski thinks he can build a new $800 million stadium and lure a team to Los Angeles County after so many others have failed.

A key part of his plan goes to the city of Industry's 82registered voters Tuesday, when they cast ballots on a bond measurethat would provide $150 million to pave the way for the stadiumwith infrastructure improvements.

City Manager Kevin Radecki expects approval by voters, mostlyold-timers who own homes grandfathered into the city about 15 mileseast of Los Angeles when it incorporated five decades ago and zonedall the land for industrial use.

"Oh, it's going to happen - 100 percent," said John Semcken,the Majestic partner managing the stadium project with Roski, whodeclined to be interviewed.

Majestic, which helped develop Staples Center, the home of theNBA's Lakers and Clippers and NHL's Kings in downtown Los Angeles,is convinced a disgruntled football team would jump at the chanceto play in a sparkling new stadium.

The company has already spent $8 million on plans for theproject that developers say would break ground as soon as a team islocked in - if it can overcome several potential challenges.

Neighboring cities worried about traffic and noise are alreadythreatening lawsuits to stop the stadium. And there is no guaranteethe NFL would condone Roski shaking loose a team from its currenthome field.

"Leagues don't like their teams to be moving from theirestablished markets," said Marc Ganis, president of Chicago-basedconsultancy SportsCorp. "You have to have a very high level ofcertainty that the team would be successful."

The string of ill-fated stadium schemes in Los Angeles beganeven before poor ticket sales and TV blackouts drove the Rams andRaiders from the nation's second-biggest market after the 1994season.

The small city of Irwindale, 20 miles east of Los Angeles, gaveRaiders owner Al Davis $10 million in 1988 to show its good faithin pursuing a plan to turn a gravel pit into a 65,000-seat stadium.But environmental issues, financing problems and regionalopposition scuttled the proposal. Irwindale never got back a penny.

Roski was previously among the backers of a plan to renovate theLos Angeles Memorial Coliseum for an expansion team after theRaiders and Rams left. But the new team went to a Houston after theLos Angeles interests were outbid by some $150 million.

Subsequent efforts to renovate the Coliseum and Rose Bowl, andbuild new stadiums in cities such as Carson and Anaheim werelargely thwarted by community opposition and a reluctance tosweeten the deal for the NFL with public funding.

With so few residents, Industry would pose fewer obstacles, saidMax Neiman, an associate director at the Public Policy Institute ofCalifornia.

"You don't have a kind of ordinary political process takingplace in that community," Neiman said. "You don't have the usualarray of local gadflies and oversight and neighbors."

The sausage-shaped city is a 12-square-mile maze of warehouses,factories, strip malls and topless bars along two freight raillines and a major freeway.

It was incorporated in 1957 amid the pastures and citrus grovesthat would later develop into sprawling Southern Californiasuburbs.

By the early 2000s, Industry's only major undeveloped parcel wasa hilly outcropping between the freeway and a row of Majestic-ownedwarehouses. Roski began planning the stadium there last year.

Renderings show sleek glass skyboxes cantilevered overbleachers. The stadium would be bordered by mid-rise buildings withoffices and shops to be built during a later phase of development.

Semcken said a team could be playing in the new stadium by 2012- if all goes according to plan.

But Ganis said the NFL, which would have to approve a team move,was likely to be less than thrilled with the humdrum location sofar from what he called the "pizazz" of Los Angeles.

"It's a compromise location, not a preferred location," hesaid.

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said the league was monitoringpotential stadium developments in the Los Angeles area but declinedto comment on specific sites or teams that might move to theregion.

Semcken said he and Roski have identified at least eight teams -including the Oakland Raiders, Buffalo Bills and Minnesota Vikings- that need a new stadium but are playing in cities unlikely toprovide one.

Roski has agreed not to make any formal overtures to team ownersuntil the Industry City Council certifies his plan, which it coulddo as soon as Thursday.

Majestic intends to finance the stadium privately. If votersapprove Tuesday's bond measure, developers would repay the $150million through ticket sales and parking fees. If the measure isdefeated, Radecki said the city could try to find other ways to payfor the infrastructure improvements.

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